This week, acclaimed Birmingham author Alan Beard has thrilled us with "Six Days With Alan Beard," a series of daily short stories. Each installment showcased his singular style, maybe best captured by the Italian term 'sprezzatura', – there is a kind of effortless coolness in Alan's flash fiction that masks a deeper, darker undercurrent, that stays with us, nagging away for days, as you will see in this final story in the series, Whatwastherethematterwithher? (Thanks so much to WLV Lit Tutor, Aiden Byrne, for originally introducing me to, and yesterday in a rapid exchange of emails, defining again, 'sprezzatura' for this. A word to live by. Ta!)
WHATWASTHEMATTERWITHHER?
Whatwastherethematterwithher? She said on the street, pulling her coat round her thin, breastless body, looking back at her kid pulling her arm. Wasshesayingyou’renogood? Hugging a bag to her, zipping up, her daughter like a treasure trove to her suddenly stood there, so many delightful things, her hair her eyes her pout and giggle her stance and movement her running down a slope too fast she was the right way up when upside down her mother looking on and opening her arms to her and she runs in, in the stumbly skip stop start way of such infants. She ruffled her hair.
© 2024, Alan Beard
essentials
Beard. An intro to Six Days with Alan Beard→
Six Day with Alan Beard: Wants to Get High→
Six Day with Alan Beard: Too Many Bags→
Six Day with Alan Beard: Slightly→
Six Day with Alan Beard: Gone→
Six Day with Alan Beard: Riot→
Six Day with Alan Beard: Whatwastherethematterwithher?→
Alan Beard on X formerly known as Twitter→
Photo from Pixabay
